This patent application relates to a lipoidal composition, and more particularly to one comprising cocoa butter or cocoa butter plus butterfat and a special hard butter, to said special hard butter, and to an improvement in process for making same.
Recent price increases in chocolate liquor and cocoa butter have made it very desirable to find replacements for cocoa butter, particularly such replacements which can be blended with cocoa butter or cocoa butter plus butterfat to an at least appreciable extent, thereby providing certain economy for the final composition.
The search for such blendable replacements has taken two basic directions. One is to find fat that naturally approximates or can be transformed to approximate the chemical structure of the main triglycerides in cocoa butter. Such approach often requires the use of "exotic" fat starting materials such as illipe oil, mango oil, shea butter, sal fat, and the like. Clearly, the lauric oils, ie., those rich in lauric acid triglycerides, such as palm kernel oil, coconut, ouricury, muru-muru, and tucum are not logical candidates.
The other approach is to work with fats and oils and blends of same preponderating in triglycerides of C.sub.16-18 fat-forming acids, for example, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, palm oil, lard, safflower oil, sunflower oil, rice bran oil, olive oil, low erucic acid rapeseed oil, or the like, and to isolate a product that approximates the hardness, snap, and gloss characteristics of cocoa butter. Usually the search for such blendable replacement in this case involves the isolation of a fat fraction derived from such oil or blend, which fraction is chemically quite unlike cocoa butter (for example, one that contains a reasonably high proportion of the unsaturated fat-forming fatty acids in a trans (high melting) as distinguished from a cis (lower melting) configuration. Cocoa butter contains no or virtually no such trans acids.
The closest art known to the inventors is the Cochran et al, U.S. Pat. No. 2,972,541 of Feb. 21, 1961. This patent shows a nonrandom triglyceride hard butter that is made from non-lauric oil and has certain defined proportions of saturated (fatty) acids and unsaturated fat-forming acids, a large proportion of which must be in the trans configuration. Such product is made by selectively hydrogenating the starting fat to eliminate at least most of the polyethenoic unsaturation and to get the designated proportion of monoethenoic unsaturation in the proper high trans to cis ratio. Following hydrogenation, the fat then is dissolved in solvent such as acetone or other ketone or 2-nitropropane, then subjected to successive fractional crystallization to isolate a high melting crystalline fraction such as a so-called "stearine" fraction and a crystalline hard butter fraction of the type the patent calls for.
Various fats can be used for the Cochran et al work and the instant invention. Among these are the oils soybean, cottonseed, safflower, palm, peanut, sunflower, low erucic rapeseed, corn, rice bran, sesame seed, citrus seed, the normally liquid fraction of lard or tallow, chicken fat, or mixtures of these. It generally is advantageous to start with oil from a single source for efficiency and economy. The preferred base stock for the instant invention is a hard butter made by the systematic, successive fractional crystallization of selectively hydrogenated high trans cottonseed oil from organic solvent. Additionally it is possible to use for the instant invention a mixture of oils that have been randomized by rearrangement, say, with sodium methylate, e.g., corn, soy, or safflower oil with palm oil, then subjected to such fractional crystallization.
One skilled in the art of fats very easily can picture the enormous number of triglyceride structures in even a selectively hydrogenated single oil such as cottonseed oil or soybean oil. The C.sub.16-18 saturated fatty acids, plus the mono- and the few diunsaturated fat-forming acids in their several cis and trans forms can be attached in a large multiplicity of positions onto the glycerin molecules to make the various triglycerides present. If such fat is not randomized, certain naturally-occurring glyceride configurations can preponderate peculiarly over others. In any event, because of configuration and concentration, there can exist in such fat totally unpredictable and unknown combinations of triglycerides for low melting, eutectic, or near eutectic compositions, some of which might have the desirable hardness at 70.degree., 80.degree. and 92.degree. F. and might melt at about human mouth temperature to give a desirable hard butter characteristic. The isolation, from such mysterious conglomeration of esters of a fat having not only good hard butter characteristics, but also one which is excellent as a replacement fat for cocoa butter (particularly in compositions containing some butterfat mixed with chocolate) is empirical and adventitious. (Chocolate liquor by itself or mixed with butterfat, say, for making milk chocolate, is an especially difficult lipid substance to admix satisfactorily with any fat except more cocoa butter and still retain the desirable hardness, snap, and initial and retained gloss characteristics.) A fat to replace this "more cocoa butter" is termed a "replacement" fat in this application. The instant invention represents a fortuitous and adventitious discovery of just such replacement fat.
Hard butters are widely used in confectionary and various other edible products because they have good "stand up" characteristics at 50.degree.-70.degree. F., a very rapid melting beyond that point, and substantially total disappearance of any solid fraction at about human body temperature. In actual practice hard butter usually has a melting point (usually measured as a Wiley Melting Point, abbreviated "WMP") between about 90.degree. F. and 105.degree. F. or even higher (the high melting ones--above 103.degree. F.--generally being regarded as quite inferior substitutes for cocoa butter). The odor is nil and taste of hard butter ordinarily is bland. Such fat should be brittle at temperature up to about 75.degree. F., this brittleness sometimes referred to as "snap". It should stand up to such temperatures without "sweating" or "bleeding" out to the surface of droplets or any visible liquid film.
When such hard butter is mixed with cocoa and sugar etc. in coatings and aged, the resulting product should resist dulling and loss of gloss, "graying", and "blooming" (which makes the coated food look unappetizing). Such changes in surface appearance often accelerate by alternately heating and cooling the coated product a number of times (commonly termed "cycling").